Character Animation
CHAPTER 6
Character Animation: Hands On
Character Animation: Discussion
Ryan Dale
Grad student by day, Blenderhead by night (well, sometimes grad student by night, too), Ryan uses
Blender partly for figures in scientific presentations but mostly for playing around with character
animation. Ryan participated in the first Blender Summer of Documentation by writing the Introduction to
Character Animation tutorial. The full version of the tutorial (only part of which is in this book) can be
found on the Blender wiki and covers the workflow of bringing a character to life from modeling and
rigging all the way through animating and adding sound.
by Ryan Dale
‘Based on “Waiting” by Zoltan Miklosi, used with permission’
CHAPTER
130
Introduction
Character Animation: Hands On
Introduction
In this tutorial, you’ll use some of Blender’s animation tools to create an action: a wave of the arm. This very
simple action will be blended later with a more complex animation.
The Action Editor is where you create individual actions: blinking the eyes, nodding the head, a walkcycle, and
so on. Later, you can mix the actions in another window called the NLA Editor. While complex “acting” for the
main characters in an animation should probably be done in a single Action, the NLA is excellent for building
variety in characters that do not hold the main focus of scene.
In the “examples” folder on the included disk, find the file called “characteranimation.blend” and open it with
Blender.
The file contains a fully rigged and skinned character. He’s a little goofy looking and rather dynamic. Let’s call
him Hank.
Setting Up Your Workspace
When you first open the file with Hank, you are in the "1-Animation" screen. This is the default animation screen
that comes with Blender, and as it works fairly well, you can use it with some minor adjustments.
The Ipo window on the right, which you’ve seen before in Chapter 3, won’t be needed right now. Replace it with an
Action Editor window. An Ipo window can only show the keys f